Liquid crystal display devices are thin and light weight, and consume low power. These properties allow the liquid crystal display devices to be widely used as display devices for various electronics today. Examples thereof include products such as mobile display panels and large display panels. Particularly, mobile display panels with high definition and high transmittance have been increasingly desired in recent years, which are to be mounted on cellphones, personal digital assistants (PDA such as PDA phones), digital still cameras (DSCs), or the like because there is a great demand for mobile goods. At the same time, the operability of such mobile display panels has been focused, which also has led to an increasing desire for a mobile display panel mounted with a touch panel as a standard feature.
One of the display modes for such liquid crystal display devices is a vertical alignment mode (also referred to as a VA mode), and liquid crystal display devices in such a mode have been drawing attention for having a high definition liquid crystal panel. This mode achieves a very high contrast ratio, which enables to improve the visibility even outdoors where mobile devices are often used. Also, conventionally, liquid crystal display devices provided with a substrate on which thin-film transistors (hereinafter, also referred to as TFTs) exhibiting excellent display qualities are used. A major issue for these liquid crystal display devices having excellent display qualities is assuring the advantage in the properties of the display devices when they are used for mobiles or provided with touch panels.
Patent Literature 1, for example, discloses a VA mode liquid crystal display device including: a first substrate having scanning lines and signal lines arranged in perpendicular to each other, switching elements arranged in the vicinity of intersections of the scanning lines and the signal lines, and pixel electrodes connected to the signal lines through the switching elements; a second substrate having a counter electrode arranged to face the pixel electrodes; spacers forming a predetermined gap between the first substrate and the second substrate; a liquid crystal layer including liquid crystal molecules that have negative dielectric constant anisotropy in the predetermined gap formed by the spacers; and an alignment controlling electrode that is arranged on the spacer surface and is different in the electric potential or floating from at least one of the pixel electrode and the counter electrode.